


This is the part where you fall down

by bluebells



Category: Mortal Kombat (1995), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Crossover, Family, Gen, Off-screen Canon Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 03:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After defending the realm of Earth, John and Sonya get married and retire to what they expect to be a quiet life in a quiet town. Stiles is four when he stumbles on his parents training in their backyard, and they have their first Talk as a family about how mommy and daddy really met back in the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the part where you fall down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nights_fang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nights_fang/gifts), [grlkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grlkat/gifts).



> This is what happens when you talk to your friends about shared headcanons and tumblr feeds your bad habits. Linden Ashby played 'Johnny Cage' in the 1995 feature of _Mortal Kombat_ , and it was all downhill from there. This is part tumblr spiel, part actual story.

Sonya, Johnny and Liu save the world before Liu leaves them to patrol said world while they retire to Beacon Hills for the quiet life away from Hollywood and Special Forces.

John Carlton and Sonya Blade become John and Sonya Stilinski. Sonya is elected Sheriff in their second year of residency and, not long after, they have Stiles.

Stiles is four when he stumbles on his parents training in their backyard, and they have their first Talk as a family about how mommy and daddy really met back in the day. John and Sonya disagree about training Stiles. John can’t wait to share what he knows, but Sonya argues she’s doing the job as Sheriff to prevent Stiles from needing those skills in their town.

And if he never learns, he can never be called to Kombat like his parents.

But then there’s the cancer. Although they never revisit that Talk, Sonya is worried about her boys and pulls Stiles aside one day to show him a thing or two. They eventually intend to bring John with them, they both feel guilty about it, but they never get to have that conversation. They train as long as they can until Sonya’s treatments start keeping her in bed.

Once she’s gone, Stiles wonders if the effort of training put too much strain on her body. He wonders if she could have fought longer or harder if she hadn’t been teaching Stiles how to perform an inverted bicycle kick. Stiles wonders if she might have survived the treatment.

John discovers the bottle. Stiles stops his training. For a year, they’re like sad, broken strangers. But then John remembers the promise he made his wife. He cleans himself up, attends his son’s middle school graduation and applies for a vacant position in the Sheriff’s Department.

A few years later, John follows in his wife’s footsteps when he’s elected as Sheriff.

He and Stiles are talking again, and John is so grateful that Stiles forgives him that year in Hell. They’ve never been closer.

And then the strange crimes start happening around town: animal attacks, abductions and _murders_. There hasn’t been a murder in Beacon Hills since the arson of the Hale family home. Sonya had been the first officer on the scene.

Stiles keeps turning up at the crime scenes. John finds Stiles’s dress shirt torn and bloody under his bed after Lydia Martin is hospitalised, and he remembers that four-year-old who blinked up at his parents under the shade in their backyard and asked if he could be a superhero, too.

He invites Stiles to have dinner with him. He wants to talk about it, but Stiles always has some homework to do with Scott. It’s okay, John can wait. He hopes he can wait.

But then Matt murders half the Sheriff’s department, and John has to watch his son and his best friend be marched away at gun point. When it’s over and Stiles won’t let his dad comfort him those times he wakes in a panic, won’t let John share all those things he still wants to say (after Sonya, after Matt, these things can’t wait), John lets Melissa confiscate the last bottles in his house. He gratefully swallows those carrot and celery sticks for the time it gives him with his son.

Because his son isn’t his son anymore, and he’s become _that_ parent who doesn’t recognise their own kid. He always thought he’d be the cool parent playing games and sharing the inappropriate jokes, the parent his kid could talk to about anything. For a while he was that parent. But he’d always thought he’d have Sonya to take turns with playing bad cop.

The night that Stiles disappears, comes back quiet and beaten, eyes shuttered, John hates himself. He hates those kids Stiles won’t name. He hates Sonya for not seeing there were still things their son would need to protect himself from on their small, sleepy hill. He hates himself most of all for thinking that.

It’s the last time.

Once summer break starts and he’s confident he can leave his new staff without them burning down the building, John stops Stiles at the breakfast table.

“Dad, Scott’s helping me train - you saw me at the game, I’m… sort of awesome,” Stiles says, gesturing to the front door he so desperately wants to step through.

John sighs, hand raised in deference. “I know, son. You could even be captain one day.”

Stiles breaks into a huge smile, so goofy and wide, it hurts - the relief that he can still smile like that. “That’s what I said!”

“And that’s why - ” That and not the domino of recent trauma, John doesn’t say, “- I think it’s time for us to do our own training. It’ll help. In more ways than one.”

His son’s jaw drops, Stiles blinks and stares at him for a long moment of disbelief. “You’re going to teach me?”

“Yeah. I know your mom and I disagreed when you were a kid, but I think she’d understand.”

Stiles glances away, rubs the lines in the grain of the table. “I just - wow. Can you even touch your toes anymore?”

“Hey.”

“Aren’t you happy I’ve had you on that new diet now?”

“I can still roundhouse the pants off any man that gives me sufficient warning.”

“Ri-ii-ight. Bad guys had manners in the twentieth century, right? They actually gave you a heads up, lined up for a beating and waited for you to say ‘ready’!”

Stiles is grinning and John can’t help returning the smile, even if it’s at his own expense. Stiles isn’t leaving, John wants to pull him into the heaviest, crushing hug, but he’s instead going to show Stiles other sort of holds in their mostly underused backyard.

“Shut up, kid. Let’s dance.”

(Shortly after, John learns about the existence and rising population of werewolves and hunters in Beacon Hills (“ _Werewolves_? Are you kidding me, Stiles? I’ve fought flame-throwing ninjas hand-to-hand, why didn’t you tell me??”). He decides that, if he can’t buy a bottle, he’s going to need some stupidly priced sunglasses to deal with this shit.)


End file.
